United States Department of DefenseNo. 318-05 IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 4, 2005DoD Identifies Marine Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was
supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Media with questions about this Marine can
call the 2nd Marine Division Public Affairs Office at (910) 451-9033
Tibetan-American Buried Among American War Heroes By Tashi TseringPublished on Today

Marine Lance Corporal Tenzin Choeku Dengkhim
has been laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, the first Tibetan-American
to be buried at the site reserved for American war heroes.

RFA
Tibetan service broadcaster Rinzin Choedon Dengkhim, mother
of Lance Corporal Tenzin Choeku Dengkhim, U.S. Marine killed in action
in Iraq, is presented with the American flag. The burial was
held Monday, April 11, 2005, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Dengkhim, 19, died as a result of "hostile
action" April 2, less than one month after deploying to Iraq, the Pentagon
said. He is the first Tibetan-American killed while serving in the U.S.
military.

Some 100 people, many of them Tibetan-Americans,
stood silently under a brilliant April sun as U.S. Marines draped Dengkhim's
coffin with a U.S. flag and fired a 21-gun salute.

United
States Marines hold the American flag over the casket of
Lance Corporal Tenzin Choeku Denghim as Tibetan monks
pray in the background.

A lone bugler played Taps, the melody that
signals "lights out" at U.S. military installations and dates from the
American Civil War.

A half-dozen Tibetan Buddhist monks then chanted
prayers.

Mother, don't worry'

"He said he knew everything that was going
on in Iraq, the situation in Iraq and in Afghanistan. He also knew that
the training would not be easy," his mother, RFA Tibetan service broadcaster
Rinzin Choedon Dengkhim, said. "But he decided to go anyway."

United
States Marine Lance Corporal Tenzin Choeku Dengkhim.

"When there was talk of his going to
Iraq, he said, 'Mother, don’t worry—we are trained for war. Though Iraq
is not our country and it may not directly be our war, the situation is
quite similar to the situation in Tibet, where people do not have freedom
of speech or enjoy human rights.'"

In an interview last week, Dengkhim remembered
her son as "a very good boy."

"He was a very good boy, deeply religious,
and [he] talked of serving Tibet as a soldier after he completed his military
career as U.S. Marine," Dengkhim's mother said last week.

He was very devoted to his grandmother, who
lives in Dharamsala [northern India]. He made sure that his grandmother
was present at his Marine graduation ceremony."

He was very fond of playing basketball every
Sunday with other Tibetans,” she said.

From India to Utah and Virginia

Dengkhim graduated from George Marshall High
School in Fairfax, Virginia, after moving with his mother and brother from
Utah, where the family first settled in the 1990s.

Dengkhim, born in India in 1985, enlisted in
the U.S. Marine Corps on September 14, 2003.

He had been on active duty in Iraq less than
a month at the time of his death. He enlisted in hope of saving money for
college, according to a family friend.

U.S. military officials said Dengkhim appeared
to have been killed in hostile action in the city of Hadithah, in Iraq’s
Anbar Province.

Dengkhim is survived by his mother and older
brother, Tenzin Fende Dengkhim, of Massachusetts.
DENGKHIM, TENZINLCPL US MARINE CORPSDATE OF BIRTH: 07/18/1985DATE OF DEATH: 04/02/2005BURIED AT: SECTION 60 SITE 8107ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY